All posts in category cats

Marion County Code Enforcement Officer Marion Richardson was fired earlier this month after 14 cats he had taken from the county pound were found dead. Richardson has since been charged with misconduct in office and a violation of the state’s animal euthanasia law. Hank Rogers, the county building code and inspections supervisor, has been charged as well.

The arrest warrants filed by the SC Law Enforcement Division (SLED) indicate that Richardson and Rogers went to the Marion Co pound and picked up 14 cats, telling the director the cats would be living on a farm and helping to control rodents. The men then drove the cats to the county landfill where Richardson shot them to death. Although SC law does allow for animal “euthanasia” by gunshot under certain conditions, SLED determined that Richardson had failed to meet these conditions when killing the cats. Ya think? So apparently the law doesn’t specifically say, “OK to use cats for target practice at the dump even if you tell a wee fib to get them from the pound.” Which is lucky, I guess.

One local rescuer who volunteers at the pound says the cats were all friendly and that Richardson has taken groups of Marion Co pound cats – you know, to the farm – many times.

Richardson is currently out on $24,000 bond. His attorney has all the excuses:

“Marion thought he was doing his job. He was called by the animal shelter to pick up the cats and dispose of them. That is exactly what he did. Shooting a feral cat in the back of the head is actually a more humane way of killing it than using carbon monoxide. Marion loves animals and has an indoor cat of his own. It is a wonder anyone would want to be a law enforcement officer when we not only fire them, but charge them with a crime for doing their job.”

Just doing his job. Shooting beats gassing. He’s an animal lover and a cat owner!

Welp, I’m convinced.

Also convincing: Local media, which jumped through the appropriate hoops in order to have their cameras allowed at the bond hearing, was locked out. Nothing suspicious there.

Richardson is due in court on November 29. Rogers is out on $7000 bond and no longer works for the county although I don’t know whether he quit or was fired. Neither man has been charged with animal cruelty. I wonder if both these guys are laying low until their government cronies can get them back on the payroll doing some other “job”, perhaps on the farm, as it were.

In February 2016, the Rowan Co pound in NC unveiled a new cat wing. The $1.1 million, 160 cage area of the facility was supposed to be an enormous upgrade for cats who were previously housed in groups inside dog runs. Anti-microbial floors, an isolation area and separate ventilation systems for each room were designed to keep cats healthy. Donor Christine Morykwas paid the bill but she didn’t simply hand over the money and hope for the best. She demanded better care for the cats:

[…]Morykwas required Rowan County to adopt specific medical treatment and sanitation protocols.
[…]
[F]our full-time staff members and four part-time staff members who are specifically responsible for cleaning the cat wing [were added].

The inspection found feces smeared on the inside of cat cages, dirty and wet cage surfaces, a generally messy cat isolation room, a record keeping system that makes it hard to identify cats, peeling paint in dog holding areas and other issues.
[…]
In the stray cat room, an inspector found three cat cages that were “very dirty.” One of the cages contained a mother cat and five kittens and was streaked with feces and litter.

Upon seeing all the filth in the cat wing, the inspector asked when the afternoon cleaning begins. The director responded with a reassuring *shrug*. Another staffer offered that the inspector happened to be there on the only weekday when they actually have no afternoon cleaning crew but said the staff did do spot cleaning. The inspector, who was there more than 2 hours that afternoon, noted that she did not see any evidence of spot cleaning. In fact, no one bothered to clean up even the most egregious offenses the inspector was pointing out during the time she was there.

The fancy anti-microbial floors hadn’t been swept or mopped, apparently in some time.

There were no cage cards or any other animal records in the cat wing. When the inspector asked to see records for cats under medical care, she was told there were no paper records as everything was done on the computer. When she asked to see the computer records, the staff was unable to access them.

The Salisbury Post asked Rowan County Manager Aaron Church about the failed inspection and he issued this really swell statement:

“Summer brings an increase of animals,” he said in an emailed response. “This is our first summer with the cat wing and issues during the beginning are to be expected. However, we have excellent staff and fully expect that things will continue to improve while providing a service to the citizens and animals of Rowan County.”

Your “excellent” staff members are not doing their jobs. The “issues” are negligence and/or incompetence. In order to “continue to improve” you have to have some improvement to start with. It’s been 6 months. How much longer do you need to figure out that shit smeared cages are supposed to be cleaned? Did Rowan Co think the anti-microbial floors were going to sweep themselves?

The county manager told WCCB that the pound’s veterinarian, Dr. Robert Krawczyk, was fired on August 23 – the date of the failed inspection. He’d only been on the job for 3 weeks:

Church tells me the decision to terminate Krawczyk was, in part due to the inspection, as well as previous issues.
The termination letter (see pictures) accuses Krawczyk of “improper comments to staff and visitors,” “failure to properly document medications,” “failure to complete an assigned daily task,” and “lack of attention to detail in applying medical treatment and evaluations.”

Yes, he definitely sounds excellent. You know who else is excellent?

Church tells me he and Shelter Director Bob Pendergrass talked about the inspection for three hours today. He says, “Bob doing an excellent job,” and, “Bob is new to the position and we have a lot of employees.”
To be exact, there are 8 animal control enforcement officers, 4 full time shelter attendants and 4 part time shelter attendants as well as the director and the shelter vet (now vacant; the search for a new shelter vet is already underway, says Church.).

Oh man, it’s a hard job. I feel sooooooooo sorry for people who have hard jobs. It sounds like work. Oh the humanity! Somehow, presumably during the never ending toil of hard labor and beneath a sweaty brow, the director managed a response:

Pendergrass sent me a statement today, that says, “The purpose of the state inspections is to help us be aware of and address any issues that their experience reveals during the inspection so that we can to do a better job. Staff is meeting internally and working hard to come up with a plan to address those concerns with a plan of action. We have a great staff and will make sure that they are addressed thoroughly.”

Great staff? Why I’ve heard they’re excellent!

But let’s get one thing straight, bub: The purpose of the state inspections is not to babysit you and remind you to wash your hands before dinner and make your bed. The purpose of the state inspections is to hold you accountable – to reassure taxpayers that you are at least meeting the bare minimum standards required to prevent you from being shut down. You failed. You should be exceeding these rock bottom minimums by a mile – because it’s your job.

And since we have just enough room left for one more enabler, enter County Commissioner Craig Pierce:

Despite the improvements, he said county officials “aren’t sitting on our laurels” and continue to pursue animal-related policy changes. The alternative, he said, is for the Rowan County Animal Shelter to euthanize a larger percentage of its animals.

“If all we had to do was euthanize the animals, we could have the cleanest shelter ever,” Pierce said.

Oh dear. Maybe you should just go sit on your laurels. In that corner over there. No waaaaay over there. Keep going. I’ll tell you when to stop.

Ms. Morykwas is not pleased:

“Just like you can lead a horse to water, you give these people a million-dollar cat wing, and they still can’t do it right,” she said in an interview with the Salisbury Post. “I don’t regret it, but I’m saddened by what’s going on. It would convince me not to invest anything else.”

[…]

“There just needs to be a complete overhaul,” she said. “Maybe one of these centuries, we will finally get someone in there that knows what they’re doing.”

Rowan Co is not committed to lifesaving. Taxpayers need to demand better – starting with their county officials all the way down to part-time shelter staff. It takes a special kind of incompetence to completely screw up a million dollar donation in a matter of months (or weeks, in the vet’s case). I’d hate to think what these people are capable of over the long term – and what their enablers are capable of attempting to justify.

These videos were submitted by an animal advocate who wishes to remain anonymous. They were reportedly taken at the Harnett Co pound in NC this week and appear to show cats suffering in the summer heat:

I don’t know what type of system is in place to keep the animals cool during the summer months at Harnett Co but whatever it is, it appears to be terribly inadequate and may be a violation of state law. It is my understanding that the NC Department of Agriculture, responsible for overseeing the state’s animal shelters, has already been advised of this situation. Based upon the dates of the state’s inspections of the Harnett Co facility, it doesn’t look like the place has been inspected during the summer in years.

If you wish to take action on behalf of the animals:

Send polite, respectful letters requesting an immediate fix to the heat problem at the Harnett Co pound which does not involve further harm to the animals to:

In February 2016, the Vermont Department of Agriculture reportedly inspected a 16 year old cat shelter in Chester called Webster’s House and approved the facility for re-licensing. In April, a local paper reported that Webster’s House was being evicted by its landlord, forcing the shelter to find homes for its 39 cats. And:

In an unrelated situation, after a monthlong investigation, Chester Police have sent a report to the State’s Attorney’s office following a complaint of animal cruelty at Webster’s House.

At that time, shelter manager Mary Donaldson characterized the complaint as coming from “a disgruntled former volunteer who complained about the cats not getting proper medical care.”

This week, Donaldson and the vice president of the shelter’s board, Jessica “Remi” Fecteau, were charged with animal cruelty and lying to police. Both women are still living at the now-closed shelter and have pleaded innocent.

The investigation started when one volunteer, Crystal Losee, a local nurse, was told not to go into the bathroom at the shelter and found a dead black cat in a bucket of water.

[…]

Crystal was told that they could not take the cat to the vet because of a $4,000 bill they already owed.”

Donaldson and Fecteau had allegedly been drowning sick cats in lieu of getting them veterinary care. And no, you’re not out of the woods yet:

Losee told police Donaldson had told her that “the cat had asked Mary to drown him but she just couldn’t do it so Remi did.”

“Remi told her that after the cat was done fighting, the cat apologized to Remi.

[…]

In addition, people at Webster’s House believed in “soul jumping” between the dying cats and the healthy cats, and that Donaldson told another volunteer that one of the cats was “destined to die to be reborn again.”

Court records reveal what appears to be a boatload of crazy-pants:

There were sworn statements from Donaldson and Fecteau, as well as others associated with the now-closed shelter, and it painted a picture of a deteriorating situation at the shelter and shelter volunteers endorsing “body jumping” to transfer the soul of a sick, dying cat into a healthy one.

At one point in December, there were an estimated 70 to 80 cats at the shelter, many of them sick. When the criminal investigation began in January, the number of cats was about half that number.

A state inspector noted the earlier cat population at 80, as did Ann Eddy of the Springfield Humane Society, who also counted about 80 cats, with sick and healthy cats intermingled.

So Webster’s House was drowning sick cats and kittens in order to transfer their souls into the bodies of healthy cats. At the same time, they were housing the sick cats, of which they reportedly had many, with the healthy cats which would obviously result in the healthy cats becoming sick and thereby guarantee a constant supply of souls for the drowning buckets. Nice bananas system.

By the way, the Rutland Herald reports that Fecteau now works at a mental health facility. So there’s that.

The lying to police charges likely stem from the various stories Donaldson and Fecteau allegedly told police when asked about the drownings. They tried everything from “never happened” to “must have drowned in the water dish”. And when volunteers from area shelters – at Webster’s House to take some of the cats for rehoming before they were evicted – found a freshly drowned cat, Donaldson tried playing the Bitch Set Me Up card:

But the afternoon’s events took a turn for the worse when humane society volunteers found a dead cat, wrapped in a plastic bag, floating in a bucket of water in back of the building. The bucket was covered by a litter box, weighed down by a large rock.

When volunteers confronted Mary Donaldson, the Webster’s House manager about the dead cat, she started yelling that it was a “plant,” and that it wasn’t one of her cats. She refused to look at the cat.

I will grant you the state inspector might not have known about the soul jumping wackiness because maybe all the Webster’s House peeps were like Ix-nay on the cray-cray while the inspector was around. And maybe he didn’t think it was weird to see water buckets covered with litter boxes and weighed down with rocks. But the inspector would presumably have noted the missing cats, the sick cats housed with the healthy ones and the lack of veterinary care. The last two are clear violations. So I guess I’m wondering: How the fuck did the state wave this crackass horror show through for 16 years? And what is going on at the other state licensed shelters in Vermont? Can somebody lose their job now, please?

A man thought to be a potential adopter visited the Brookhaven Animal Rescue League in Mississippi on Friday, asked to see the cats, then allegedly beat one to a pulp before leaving. The guy was unsupervised as all the staff and vols at the private shelter were chasing a loose dog. The three year old cat, called Tilly, was found in an open cage, battered and bloody, clinging to life. She died later at a vet’s office.

The area where Tilly was found is described as a colony room so it sounds as if she was tortured in view of other cats. There was blood spatter on the walls and a “plastic stick” was in pieces. The man apparently beat Tilly until his weapon fell apart then stomped on her.

Jody Cothron has been charged with misdemeanor animal cruelty in connection with the case. In Mississippi, nearly all animal cruelty offenses are misdemeanors. Police have obtained surveillance video from the shelter.

I totally get that there was an emergency at the shelter because a dog had gotten loose. I get that everyone was looking out for the dog’s well being by chasing him around and leaving the guy in the cat colony room unsupervised. But come on people, you need to watch your pets and not leave them alone with strangers.

If a guy walks into a daycare and says he’s interested in looking around because he might want to enroll his kid, you don’t show him into the infant room and leave him alone – even if there’s an emergency. Emergencies happen. They need to be handled in such a way that no one’s safety is compromised.

If it was absolutely an all-hands-on-deck situation that required everyone in the place to help, the first thing that needed to happen was for someone to quickly explain to the visitor that he would need to wait in his car until the dog was captured and then to make sure the guy was out of there. Because apparently unsupervised adopters beating shelter pets is a thing now. FFS.

There are levels of appalling. This story is all top tier appalling. It’s the appallingest.

On Monday, January 18, Teresa Panameno let her cat outside. Little Boy never came home. He was trapped by a neighbor and Wake Co ACOs picked him up the next day. Like many pets who get trapped by cat hating neighbors and taken to places that kill roughly half the cats they are supposed to be sheltering, Little Boy was not in a ball of yarn playing mood. Instead of recognizing his behavior as normal under the circumstances, the Wake Co pound rushed to deem him unowned and unadoptable:

Dr. Jennifer Federico, Director of Wake County Animal Services told ABC11 that the cat was immediately deemed feral for his aggressive nature, and given the state-mandated stray hold of 72 hours.

Meanwhile Ms. Panameno continued searching for Little Boy, including looking at the animals listed on the Wake Co pound’s website. She finally saw his picture posted on the site on Thursday, January 21 and began calling the shelter. No one was answering the phone so she sent an email. But no one was answering emails either. The office staff had gone home in preparation for a storm that was moving through the area. The front office stayed closed on Friday due to inclement weather but Wake Co kept the kill room up and running for business as usual. Little Boy was killed on Friday, while his owner was trying to get him back.

Someone from the pound finally answered Ms. Panameno’s email on Sunday, advising that her pet could not be handled at the time he was impounded, failing to mention that he had been killed while the place was closed to the public. So the next day, Ms. Panameno drove to the pound, cat carrier in hand, to bring Little Boy home. Gee, I bet that was a swell conversation to have.

Noooo. When you wait by the mailbox for weeks for your Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring and then it finally arrives and you figure out the special message Little Orphan Annie had for you was a crummy commercial, that’s just sad all around. When you accept an owned pet from a cat hating neighbor, immediately label him unowned, then close for business due to weather but keep your kill room open, then fail to admit to the owner what you’ve done so that she walks into your facility full of hope, expecting to take her beloved family member home, that’s unconditionally appalling. Your precious procedure sucks. If you can’t own it, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.

Screengrab from PetHarbor of the Rowan Co pound’s cat listings on January 15, 2016. They’re doing the best they can, prolly.

A woman in NC has been trying to do the Rowan Co pound’s job for them since they are so terribly awful at it. Jennifer Frasier regularly pulls cats from the pound and gets them adopted to permanent homes. Pound staff say that Ms. Frasier has come in more than once and taken every single cat on the kill list. She also pulls for other rescues when they want to save cats from being killed but can’t physically get there before the buzzer sounds.

In November 2015, a group of cats was found abandoned in Iredell Co, which neighbors Rowan Co. Some of the cats were traced back via microchips to Ms. Frasier’s father (the article is a bit confusing on the details here and of course the county won’t provide any information). Ms. Frasier says she had pulled some of the cats from the Rowan Co pound for another rescue. She says she turned them over to that rescue the same day she pulled them and has documentation to verify her claim. The cats were picked up, sent back to Rowan Co then returned to Ms. Frasier’s father.

Last month, Iredell Co Animal Services had police arrest Ms. Frasier and her father on charges of animal abandonment. Subsequent to the arrest, Ms. Frasier has been attacked on social media and her rescue’s adoption center has been vandalized. The adoption center is now closed. Both Ms. Frasier and her father are due in Iredell Co court on February 1.

I will grant you the details of this case are clear as mud but what is known is that both the pounds in Rowan Co and Iredell Co are the suck. In 2014, Iredell Co killed roughly 3 out of 4 of its cats.

Screengrab from PetHarbor showing a cat listed by Iredell Co.

Anyone who walks into a pound and says, “Give me every cat on your kill list” is ok by me. I don’t know why Rowan Co didn’t intervene and tell Iredell Co to back off when this unfortunate situation arose but the whole thing sounds like a bunch of slackers got together with some cat haters and threw a party. I hope the county withdraws the charges before the court date. If they can take time out of their cat hating day I mean.

Reader Casey Post who volunteers with the Medina Co SPCA in Ohio sent me this great adoption story. Shared with permission:

Mushu (left) and Spookie (Photo by Casey Post)

Spookie (the black cat) is 13 years old. He first came to the shelter as a result of an abuse case (his person was convicted). Super scared of new stuff, hides all the time, but so, so sweet and loves to be petted (you just have to reach into wherever he is to do it).

Spookie was eventually adopted out last year to a guy who apparently didn’t take great care of him – he was returned to the shelter along with this kitten – both VERY hungry (like they hadn’t eaten in days) and covered in fleas.

It was decided to adopt them out together, since Spookie loves Mushu so much and Mushu may help him adapt to new situations. Mushu is easygoing and friendly and loves his Spookie.

A senior cat and a five month old kitten. Most people who want a senior, don’t want a kitten and most people who want a kitten aren’t in the market for a senior.

Target Zero is actually a nonprofit called First Coast No More Homeless Pets which is based in Jacksonville, Florida. The name of the organization has flip-flopped in the last few years but it was last changed from Target Zero to FCNMHP in May of 2014; it has received numerous grants over the years, two of the largest being from the Best Friends Animal Society (a 2012 grant for $340,000 and a 2013 grant for $280,000).
[…]
Target Zero was in Huntsville in early September of 2014. We found out in early March of 2015 that the City had signed a contract with Target Zero on January 15, 2015. When I contacted Cameron Moore of Target Zero in March of 2015 to inquire about plans moving forward, I was told that a Town Hall meeting would be held at some point. Beyond that, there were no specific plans shared with me during our hour-long phone conversation. When I expressed the opinion of our coalition that the city should make a commitment to become a no kill community in order to obtain an in-kind commitment from the public, I was told this position is “silly.”
[…]
Target Zero has yet to become visible in this community, to hold a Town Hall meeting here or to otherwise inform the public of how it plans to make ours a no kill community.

As a backdrop to the Huntsville fraud, the shelter in the city of Jacksonville, TZI’s home base, is in disarray. The division chief is quitting her job while under investigation for falsifying records to make it look like the facility has achieved “no kill”:

The city’s inspector general confirmed Thursday that the chief of Jacksonville’s Animal Care and Protective Services Division who resigned Wednesday is under investigation.
Nikki Harris’ resignation came a month after at least two whistleblowers made allegations that the shelter was being mismanaged and possibly putting animals’ lives in danger.
[…]
Harris personnel file shows that she came to ACPS from First Coast No More Homeless Pets in 2013. She was appointed chief the next year and given a salary of $90,000.

Gee, I’d like to keep a salary that size too, if I had one. Although I’d be inclined to actually do my job in order to keep the salary – not kill animals and lie about it. But I guess I’m “silly” too.

The emperor will presumably continue to show off his invisible clothes. The question is, how much longer must the animals being victimized by this chicanery, especially cats, wait for Best Friends, the Jacksonville Humane Society and the other enablers to start protecting their interests. Because waiting is lethal.

Cleo, a feral cat who has been vaccinated and neutered. (Photo by Casey Post)

The city of Niagara Falls, NY has a population of about 50,000 and contains approximately 14 square miles of land area. Sauntering around those 14 square miles are more than 60,000 stray and feral cats – so says the SPCA of Niagara Co. That works out to about 4286 cats per square mile of land in the city. Another way to look at it: One square mile equals 640 acres. Assuming an even distribution of cats, that would be roughly 7 cats on every acre of land. Since we know that cats would obviously not distribute themselves evenly, it’s reasonable to assume there are many acres with less than 7 cats and many with more than 7 cats. But no matter how you toss the dice, the claim amounts to a terrible awful lot of cats.

But wait, there’s more:

“As long as they’re not spayed or neutered those numbers are just going to keep increasing,” said Amy Lewis, executive director [of the SPCA of Niagara Co].

The Coming Menace. Of Cats.

Alex Matthews sees the cats all the time roaming in his neighborhood[.]

Yes I would guess so. I imagine he sees them as he’s wading through them and tripping over them. He sees them perched on every tree branch, front porch and car hood. He sees them in his cat hating nightmares:

He says people are feeding them and they keep coming back for more. However he has another concern. “With so much rabies and I got young kids that are curious, they’ll go out and touch the cats and kittens and I don’t want them to get sick.” he said.

There have been four animals who tested positive for rabies in Niagara Co from January through July 2015. At least one of those four was a raccoon. I don’t know what type of animals the other 3 were or if they were outside the city of Niagara Falls (since the data is reported by county, not by city). At any rate, it hardly seems as if there is “so much rabies” within the Coming Menace cat population of Niagara Falls.

But the SPCA of Niagara Co appears to be fanning the flames of cat hatery. I wonder why:

Lewis told 2 On Your Side the main reason for the cat explosion is because “there’s a lot of people don’t spay and neuter, there’s not low cost accessible spay-neuter programs for them. We do have one at the shelter, but we don’t have the resources to accommodate large numbers of animals.”
The Niagara SPCA [needs] a new in-house surgical suite to do more.
The Board is in the very beginning stages of planning either a large expansion at the current facility or building a new facility. The cost could be as high as $8 million.

Ah, I see. They need $8 million. Or maybe sixty-thousandy-million. Or maybe, like the Phantom Menace community’s cats, “those numbers are just going to keep increasing.” But instead of educating the public about humanely reducing the community cat population over time while protecting public health via rabies vaccination and asking for donations to help in that endeavor, the SPCA seems to have gone the blame-the-public route while throwing cats under the bus. I mean, the cats who weren’t already under buses in the city, which would have to be quite a lot. Because so many.